From casting pouch to TV queen

Michael Idato

In the annals of showbusiness history, its biggest stars — Elvis, Madonna, Oprah, Liberace and Abigail — have only ever required one name. To that honour roll we must add one more: Skippy. But recognition of our "bush kangaroo", and the part she played in Australian culture, has been more than four decades coming."Skippy was the first series, internationally, to put Australian characters and settings on screen with confidence in a way that rang bells with people around the world," says National Film and Sound Archive historian Graham Shirley in the new documentary, Skippy: Australia's First Superstar, from Electric Pictures (The Hunt for HMAS Sydney, Gallipoli's Submarine).Sue Milliken, who worked as a continuity girl on Skippy before producing films such as Sirens and Paradise Road, agrees. "It was the beginning ... that's why it was so important, it was the beginning of putting our stories out in the world," she says.Ninety-one episodes of Skippy: The Bush Kangaroo were made, sold to 128 countries — but not Sweden, which felt it misled children into believing animals "could do what they really can't" — translated into 28 languages and watched, at its peak, by more than 300 million viewers a week.To most of us who recall it with affection, however, it is largely remembered for the extraordinary communication skills ("tchk, tchk, tchk") and manual dexterity of its star, who was seen, in various episodes, operating the radio, untying rope knots, fetching the mail and, if needed, tackling ruffians such as the sinister Dr Alexander Stark (Frank Thring).The series was created by filmmaker Lee Robinson, who had, during a trip to the US, taken inspiration from Flipper, a series about a widowed marine park ranger, his two sons and their intelligent pet dolphin. Robinson's premise was basic — delete the dolphin, insert a kangaroo. The similarity is so obvious that in a more litigious age he might not have got away with it.As associate producer Jill Robb recalls: "He understood marketing, he knew the kangaroo was an icon, the idea that you put it in a family situation instead of the family dog was the brilliant marketing idea."Robinson teamed up with filmmaker Dennis Hill and actor-producer John McCallum and, with a theme song composed by Eric Jupp, a pilot episode was filmed, set in the fictional Waratah National Park.It starred Garry Pankhurst as Sonny Hammond; Ed Devereaux as his dad; ranger Matt Hammond; Tony Bonner as pilot Jerry King; and Ken James as Matt's older son, Mark Hammond. Female characters, student Clancy Merrick (Liza Goddard) and Dr Anna Steiner (Elke Neidhardt) came later.But the star of the show was indisputably Skippy, played by (depending who you ask) between nine and 14 actual kangaroos, not all the same colour and so-named after an exhaustive naming process in which Jumpy, Hoppy and Springy were rejected.The series also came with a couple of ground rules — according to the show's original writer's bible: "Skippy is not a pet, the policeman is always our friend and mateship must predominate against authority."Robinson, speaking in a past interview, said freedom and wildlife were at the show's heart."The key to it was that the little boy would always have all this wonderful country to roam about in, to have the feeling that he was free to roam the country and he knew the animals."The show was an instant hit. Germaine Greer, the former Celebrity Big Brother contestant and professor of English literature at the University of Warwick, attributes the show's popularity to its vivid imagery of the Australian outback."A cobalt blue sky, grey vegetation, ruddy brown rocks, and I was just staring at it ... I don't think I even realised how homesick I was until I saw those tree shapes, the landscape and the light," she says.Pankhurst, who is no longer an actor and has avoided the spotlight since his childhood, looks back on his role as Sonny with great affection. When the series ended, he returned to "a normal life" and has rarely spoken about the series since, declining requests to appear on television to talk about it."It wasn't a particularly relevant part of where I was later in life; I never saw it as making me special," he says.He agreed to speak in the documentary, he says, because of "the non-commercial nature of it and because it was concentrating on what the show meant to other people, not just the cast, and the effect it had on the television industry. It really was something quite special and perhaps this is one of the last major productions involving the history of the show and it's nice to be involved this time around."Narrated by Magda Szubanski, directed by Stephen Oliver produced by Andrew Ogilvie and Andrea Quesnelle, the documentary examines the history of the show, speaks to its cast, including Bonner, James, Goddard and Pankhurst, and reunites members of the crew.It also explodes some of the myths — kangaroo handler Tim Mullany confirms kangaroos are not intelligent animals (something the Swedes knew all along) and do not actually say "tchk". Though, he adds, when presented with a kangaroo, a lot of tourists do.The enduring success of Skippy cannot be underestimated. Even though it finished production in 1969, it remained on Channel Nine for more than three decades.It also spawned a feature film in 1969, Skippy and the Intruders, and was one of the first Australian television programs to spawn a line of merchandise — books, jigsaw puzzles, cards, moneyboxes, talcum powder and, inexplicably, ashtrays.The show's stars were also sent on a national tour that, according to the documentary, attracted larger crowds than the contemporaneous tours of the Queen Mother and US president Lyndon Johnson combined. Pankhurst describes the attention as "overwhelming".At the time, he says, he was aware of the scale of the show's success but was protected to some extent by the presence of the show's adult cast."We used to get reams of fan mail, we'd get reports of the program sales and you'd see some of the dubbed versions, but in later years, there was the recognition of my name," Pankhurst says.Though it is a closed chapter of his life, he acknowledges the sometimes inexplicable legacy of the show."It's probably taken 30-35 years to really come to grips with what Skippy meant and what my part in Skippy was all about," he says. "I used to try and avoid the subject while trying to live a normal life. In recent years I've come to realise the impact it made and the fact that the contribution to Australian history and the world's impression of Australia was such a large one. Quietly, I feel very proud about it."

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